hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. after a bruising 24 hours of headlines about a maskless donald trump potentially spreading infection throughout the residence of the white house and amid reports of a white house in a state of full blown chaos after more than 18 people in donald trump's orbit have tested positive for the coronavirus, donald trump just in the last hour brought his covid positive body to the oval office. his chief of staff has reportedly been inside the oval

office with him, that's despite trump's ongoing battle with coronavirus and with no reason to believe that he's not still infectious and thus a danger to everyone and anyone who comes in contact with him, trump has been pushing to the oval even as "the new york times" describes the west wing as a situation many see as, quote, spiraling out of control, adding, quote, the pandemic that mr. trump has treated cavalierly for months seem to have locked its grip on the white house. fears over the safety of the hundreds of people serving in president trump's super spreading administration running in concert with worry over the political carnage evident in donald trump's standing in the polls. the "times" adds this, quote, west wing aides shaken by polls showing the president badly trailing joe biden, worried that they were living through the final days of the trump administration. those concerns only amplified by an erratic series of tweets last

night, even for trump. trump abruptly calling off talks on coronavirus relief and then demanding congress approve said relief or some version of it, all within the span of just a few hours. presidential conduct so puzzling as we said even for trump, maggie haberman and annie carnie of the "new york times" reported, quote, some white house staff members wondered whether mr. trump's behavior was spurred by a cocktail of drugs he's been taking to treat the coronavirus, including dexamethasone, a steroid that can cause mood swings and can give a false sense of energy and euphoria. the president's condition and consequences for his white house, his campaign and our country is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. yamiche alcindor is back. democratic strategist, basil smikle and the director of infectious disease research and policy at the university of minnesota. doctor, let me start with you.

your analysis since the beginning has always been sober but it's always been blunt. what are we possibly looking at when we analyze donald trump for all his surreal antics. there's never been a question about his mental and physical state being altered by an untested drug cocktail that he's on to treat the novel coronavirus. what could we be witnessing in his conduct? >> since i'm not a clinician and i'm not taking care of him, as an observer from the public health world, obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense. but then, we have to look at the fact that we've had this challenge ongoing without a national plan, without a way to actually safely protect the west wing from this virus. right now i'm not sure what is real and not. the late tom clancy once said to me the only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense and i'm afraid i'm among those who now believe that that might be true.

>> there are so many places we could go there. the other thing that i think confounds a lot of people is when you have a vice president that polls show people trust in the area of coronavirus more than they trust donald trump frankly, why not, if you're undergoing experimental care and they've made a lot of the nature of his treatments being experimental, why not -- just from a medical perspective, we'll dive into the politics with yamiche and basil but why not transfer authority and control and focus on a recovery with a patient like the president of the united states? >> again, all i can say is that as a nation we want our leaders to be of full capability to respond and as someone who has personally experienced what it's like to be on steroids as such for a medical condition at one time i can attest to the fact

that it does create some challenges of thinking. i surely can't judge whether his thinking is different today than it was yesterday. i can just keep coming back to the fact that we have a hell of a problem with coronavirus right now and we continue to be averted into this kinds of issues and not addressing what happens. for example, in the upper midwest we're turning on fire right now here just like we saw earlier this summer in georgia, florida, texas, arizona and california and we're missing out on that story and we're focused on unfortunately what's happening at the white house. >> let's correct that right here and right now. take me through -- also as i was coming up here i saw a news flash that boston has already announced that they will shut down all public schools there because their infection rate passed 4%. is it your view that the virus is still raging across this country in an uncontained way? >> nicolle, we had predicted over two months ago that probably post labor day when college students came back we would first see a big increase

in cases in that group. that would spill over to the public. we've also seen that basically so much of the public has now not only experienced pandemic fatigue but as you're seeing, pandemic anger, people who don't believe that this pandemic is real and therefore not only will they not comply with public health issues as we know we need to enforce to limit transmission but they're actually flaunting not supporting it. if you put that together with all the outbreaks we're seeing right now with funerals, weddings, family reunions, bars and restaurant visits, i can go through the laundry list, we're seeing a major increase in cases. i think that within a few weeks to clearly by the time of the election this country could very well be far in excess of new cases per day than we saw earlier this summer when we were a house on fire. i don't think we're understanding it. just today in my state of wisconsin here they're now setting up tent hospitals in

milwaukee to handle the overflow of cases. this is going to continue to get worse. >> we'll put a pin in donald trump's roid rage and stay on this. i've got a few more questions about the current state of covid in america. from what you just said, you talked about pandemic anger, what is the impact to that sort of low din of pandemic anger, of a president who's diagnosed, who's hospitalized early after his diagnosis, treated with the best drugs available to a human being, coming out and saying, eh, it's not that bad, don't let it dominate your life? >> first of all, as you so well know and you've covered it very well on this show, we've got over 200,000 americans who have died from this virus. god knows how many around the world. all of those families, friends, colleagues, et cetera, they understand that it's not just simple. we also understand that many of them don't have access to the kind of care that the president had. so again, i wish the president, his family and all those involved with the white house

the very best, but as a nation we are failing desperately in trying to deal with this pandemic right now. we need a plan. what is our plan? we don't have one. we didn't have a plan to protect the white house. so i keep coming back to that as the case numbers begin to increase dramatically. we also need to ask ourselves -- it's not that i don't care what goes on in washington d.c. but in many ways i don't anymore because it's theatre. what we need to do is in public health we need to understand on the ground we are losing this battle and more and more every day. that's what we need to focus on and i appreciate that you have focused on that a lot on this show and that's what we need to continue to do. >> again, i don't want to move the lens off of where you've placed it which is on the fight against coronavirus absent a white house that is working and rowing in the same direction but i do want to understand what detrimental impact not having a national plan and not having a president who models or channels

the kind of behaviors that save lives with the kinds of events you just described, funerals, weddings, gatherings. we're heading into a time where the actual conversations people are having is should i put my family of four in a car and drive to a relative's house and try to have some semblance of a normal holiday. what should inform those decisions? >> you know, i think at this point we are in our covid year. we're not like where we were last year, whether it be school, holidays, work, social settings, and hopefully not like we'll be in a year or more from now. in our covid year nothing is going to be the same and we should come to expect that. i just did a podcast last week on the holidays. start planning now. don't take the virus home to mom, dad, grandma and grandpa. we've seen too many examples of where grandma and grandpa are dead two weeks after you visited. this is a time for us to think carefully about if we love the ones that are around us we're

going to do whatever we can to protect them. right now in our state, minnesota and it's happening around the country, 40% of the cases don't have any clue where they picked up the virus because they're back out into the public. they just are doing what they're normally doing. so when they do go visit family, when they visit relatives, when they go to a wedding, imagine you go attend a wedding this weekend and three weeks from now the father or the grandfather of the groom and bride are dead. that is happening with increasing frequency. people have to understand that this is real. we can't cut through much of what's happening right now in washington. this dominates all the discussion. and again, i care what happens to our leaders but i really care what's happening in our communities. i appreciate this opportunity to keep reminding people this is real and don't wait to find out how real it is when you lose one of your loved ones. we're seeing the death numbers go up and the cases go up. that is going to happen well into the fall and with indoor air now becoming a big part of

this where we're going to be indoors more and more where transmission will be heightened, this is the time we have to just be clear-cut in our messages. this is real. >> what should inform decisions about sending a child into a classroom? at an emotional level i understand how impossible these choices are. if you have to go to work and you don't have child care and have the luxury of working from home, a lot of parents say my kid's going. what should inform is that? it seems to me that kids carry virus, transmit virus and in rare instance kids get very sick and can die from the virus but there's nothing different about a classroom than an office and most people, again, who are able to work from home are working from home, not in offices. >> you're absolutely right. let me just say as a grandfather of five young grandchildren all in that setting, i think about

this a lot. let's start first by just distinguishing between kids. those who are roughly 11 years of age and older -- and there's nothing magic about that number -- are really younger adolescence and then into older kids and universities, they're transmitting the virus. we're seeing outbreaks occur with them. we're seeing some of them sick at a much lower rate than we would expect to see for example even in young adults. when we get into children younger than, say, 10 years of age or younger, there we actually see even less illness. we see some transmission surely. we have had limited evidence of transmission to teachers and then the virus comes home, but one of the real questions about this disease which we haven't answered well is why do we see less severe illness in this group than we do even with in u influen influenza. that's the good news but as you pointed out, not every child will be totally protected.

we have over 100 children who have died who are under age 11 in this country. it's a point from an educational standpoint and the question is what is the right answer and i don't think any of us have that right now. >> in terms of getting a handle on the virus, the two candidates have taken a very different position and i don't have any idea what your political views are and i don't want to know but in terms of the choices facing the future of this country and the toll that this pandemic takes on them, tony fauci talked about 400,000 americans that could die by the end of this year. win or lose, donald trump will be in the oval office potentially covid positive as we understand him to be in there today until the end of the year. are there opportunities to get off that path? >> first of all, let me say i agree with tony. second of all, i've served rolls in the last five presidential administrations and as a statement official in minnesota

i worked for two republican governors, two democrat governors, one independent and my family can't tell you my partisan politics. i'm just a private in the public health army. take my comments in that regard, just trying to call balls and strikes. yes, there's a lot we can do. we need to help support those governors for example who now by de facto have had to become the leader of 50 places out there against this fight. here we have a state like wisconsin and even here in minnesota where we're seeing this major expansion of cases. we have two democratic governors who are trying very hard to put into place limiting size of large groups coming together, curtailing certain hours in bars and restaurants which we know there's tremendous transmission, and in both states you have legislative leaders of the opposite party trying to take away all of the authority that these governors have. this is just wrong. it is wrong from a public health standpoint. so what we need to do is just

stick with the science. i don't care what your partisan politics are. there's a lot limit this. look no further than the state of new york. here was a state that was a house on fire in april. mistakes made, an incredible number of deaths. but since that time they've really gotten it right. under the governor's leadership they have gotten the number of cases down to what no other state or even the district of columbia have been able to do. even now as they loosen up the economy and let people go out into the public more, they're seeing some increase in cases in certain neighborhoods in new york city. they're tightening down again. we can do this a lot better but it takes leadership, takes courage, and it takes collaboration. right now we're having a hard time with all of those. >> i didn't mean to interrogate you for the first 15 minutes of this program but you made points that startled me into it and i'm glad we did. stand by while we turn our attention to yamiche and basil.

it's such a good point that every moment we spend not talking about how to protect americans from this raging pandemic about how to help them and advise them with science at the center of it and how to inch back into something resembling a pandemic normal, donald trump manages to just grab the spotlight. now he's doing so as a covid patient himself who was in very serious care and condition at least a couple days ago. he seems to have gone rogue inside his own white house and traveled to the oval office today. what is your reporting suggest was behind this? did doctors say this was a good idea? do we know if there were any contacts on his way there? are they evacuated, wearing ppe in the residence? what do we understand about this white house trying to function around a covid patient in the president? >> can i first also say that i was literally taking notes as the doctor was talking. >> me too. >> i was like, can i see my mom

for christmas, what does he say? i think it's so important to really continue to focus on the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic that is killing so many people so as a viewer, i'm grateful for you, nicolle, for letting us listen to that. in terms of the white house, the president, i'm told just a few minutes ago, is in the oval office. mark meadows has been in there with at least one other white house official. i'm told that they are all having to wear full ppe gear. the white house is insisting that they're handling this appropriately. i posed the question how did he get to the oval office? were people exposed? a white house official told me no one was exposed supposedly. they said he walked outside and that's how he got to the oval office. of course there are still secret service agents that have to guard the president and a number of people are still involved with the movement of the president being the most protected person in our country, again, someone who couldn't protect himself from the virus. i think what we're seeing here is president trump wanting to

look confident, wanting to look like he's in charge, wanting to also look like he's focused on getting some sort of stimulus deal passed even though we saw yesterday in this remarkable tweet the president unilaterally deciding that he does not want to go forward with covid relief until after he's re-elected in his mind. he said he wants to focus on the supreme court nominee. obviously he heard all of the backlash from those tweets including from republicans who i have to tell you when i was talking to them, a number were gob smacked at the idea that the president would take this and say it's all about me, i'm the reason why these talks aren't going. now you see the white house pushing back and saying maybe we can get some checks done, maybe do airlines. nancy pelosi and democrats are saying we tried to do piecemeal deals and you said no and yesterday you said that you don't want a deal so what is actually the strategy. the only strategy i can think of is the fact that the president wants to look like he's in charge right now as he continues to be on this cocktail of experimental drugs that we're not quite sure how they're

affecting his body because the president's doctor, at least for the last two days, has not briefed. we still don't know whether or not he has lung damage, whether or not -- when is the last time he tested nothing, how many people have been exposed. that's with two dozen white house officials and growing testing positive for this virus. it's a remarkable situation. >> basil, let me bring you in on the political moment donald trump finds himself in. i think universally every american wishes the president a recovery from covid and is glad that he has access to the best care in the world, but if you trust the polls, joe biden has opened up near historic lead against an incumbent president, that if donald trump comes back from this and i think it was four years ago today that the "access hollywood" tape came out, that john podesta's hacked emails started leaking so i know there's a lot of recent history

and a lot of reasons to remain on our footing where we know anything could happen. but this moment as a snapshot in this race is slipping away from donald trump. >> i think that's right and i know there are a lot of people that are still wishing that joe biden would do more and do more publicly but the truth is donald trump has done more to sort of hurt his campaign and hurt his message and that of the republican party. he's done more to do that in the last two weeks than joe biden could ever say in a speech. it's incredible to me because as we talk about this moment of the pandemic, i teach college students, they're all zoomed out. they just zoom all day and it's a constant reminder of where we are in this country at the moment. they're reflecting on what, to their view, has been a very noxious sort of presidency. we've talked about it in terms of trump versus established norms. it's weird that in the

closing -- it's fitting for him that in the closing days of this campaign, instead of making the closing argument to voters he's basically got a message of mind over matter. i don't mind because you don't matter. you see that in the way that he's flouted the science in terms of wearing the mask and exposing so many of the people around him to this virus. so the juxtaposition is important. you see, as you said, the president who has the best health care no one can have in this country, yet folks like you and i are going to be -- unfortunately, if anybody close to us passes away, we can't be in the hospital with them. we can't hold their hand. we have to say good-bye over facetime. who knows what the vice president can do at this point. as you mentioned earlier, can he come out with a message saying that the agenda is more important than the man. i don't think average americans see it like that anymore, especially as you have young people whose parents are not

even sending them to school because they're afraid of the exposure to the virus. it has upended our lives on a very -- daily basis, in very real ways and in the closing days of this campaign, all the president can do is make us feel like the rules for him don't apply to everybody else and that is apparent to everyone. >> all three of you have blown my mind today and stretched my way of looking at all of this. for that i'm grateful to all of you. thank you so much for starting us off today. >> thank you. >> when we come back, a chilling warning from a former head of the cia who says if there's another term for trump he doesn't know what happens to america. we'll talk about these warnings with another former cia director, john brennan, who's been sounding the alarm all along. later, "the new york times" jaw-dropping reporting on how top leaders at the justice department drove this administration's cruel family

separation policy to the reporters who have been on the beat will join us. senator kamala harris will face off tonight against the head of the white house coronavirus task force, vice president mike pence for their one and only debate. all those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a short break. "deadline: white house" continues after a short break. this week on "the upper hands"...

special guest flo challenges the hand models to show off the ease of comparing rates with progressive's home quote explorer. international hand model jon-jon gets personal. your wayward pinky is grotesque. then a high stakes patty-cake battle royale ends in triumph. you have the upper hands! it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. only on "the upper hands."

it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. others see cracked concrete, instrundown courts.ere. i see a way to bring pride back to communities. that's why i made project backboard and a site with godaddy. how will you make your mark? make the world you want. if there was another term for president trump, i don't know what happens to america. truth is really important but especially in intelligence. president trump doesn't care about facts. president trump doesn't care

about the truth. he doesn't listen to his experts. >> that was michael hayden, the former cia director, former nsa head. he joins a running and growing list of former national security officials who have announced their support for joe biden with a warning against the threat posed by donald trump and the threat that he increasingly presents to our safety, our foreign alliances and our national security. that's perhaps made obvious by his amped up twitter activity, donald trump is currently on steroids to treat his coronavirus infection. it's a diagnosis that our next guest, another cia director, warnings that's just another reason for us to feel alarmed in this moment. he writes, i sorely wish that i had never felt compelled to speak out against a sitting president of the united states. it has given me no pleasure to do so, but as long as mr. trump continues to trample the tenants of our democracy, lie to the

american people, denigrate the office of the presidency, endanger security and sully our reputation around the world, i will not relent in my criticism of him. joining us now is john brennan. his new book "undaunted" is just out. also joining us, former editing manager of "time" magazine, my often sidekick, rick stengel, is here. lucky for us both of you are msnbc analysts. i want to start on the book. i have heard from former peers of yours in the intelligence community that you speak for so many of them who just from that sort of dna that i think you describe in that excerpt are just not comfortable stepping into the political fray. you have stormed into the political fray. you have drawn fire from this president, and you have advocated on behalf of american national security but it hasn't been without a lot of arrows

pointed at you. just talk about that experience and how that informed the writing of the book. >> nicolle, as you said, i am uncomfortable speaking out so stridently against a sitting president of the united states. for over 33 years i served presidents and administrations of both political parties and i had tremendous respect and admiration for the seriousness with which they approach their job and their solemn duties. i clearly have seen that donald trump does not pay the same type of respect to the office of the presidency. we know that he had no experience coming into office and i thought he was going to -- i would hope he was going to change his ways but he didn't. therefore, having served my country for well over three decades and trying to protect the right of american citizens to speak out freely, i am now exercising that right because clearly this is a very dangerous time, very abnormal time. just like mike hayden who you

knew and worked with during the bush administration, mike is an outstanding patriot. he has served this country with great distinction over the course of his entire professional career, and despite suffering the debilitating effects of a stroke, his voice now is more powerful than ever in terms of underscoring the dangers of a trump administration that is going to go into another four years of trampling our democratic foundations and principles and as i said sullying the reputation as well as the standing of the united states in this world. therefore, i'm continuing to speak out. it's one of the reasons why i decided to write this memoir which is much more about my career and my being able to witness history as opposed to just the interactions i've had with donald trump. i met him only once but clearly over the last three and a half years i have felt it my responsibility and obligation to underline just how challenging the future is if donald trump remains in the white house.

>> director brennan, if i could just say for the benefit of our readers, we've benefitted so much outside of the clash between yourself and the president. there have been some extraordinary moments during his presidency, the slaughter of jamal khashoggi and your ability to help us understand what was going on behind the scenes. can you broaden the lens and help us understand what you think has happened to foreign policy under donald trump. john bolton gave us an insider account of believing that u.s. foreign policy, at least as it pertained to china and turkey, might have been so corrupted that he picked up the phone and called bill barr and that's an inside account. what are your concerns with your three decades of relationships around the world? >> donald trump clearly operates like an authoritarian leader. many authoritarian leaders that i have observed and analyzed over the course of my career, he has taken the pages out of their

playbooks. he tries to suppress any opposition. had etries to manipulate and control the instruments of power, intelligence, law enforcement, justice. he tries to denigrate the media in terms of any type of information that is put out that tries to really expose his fraudulent behavior as well as his dishonesty and his lies. therefore, when i think about how the united states has played this leading role in the free world the last 75 years, since world war ii, and how countries around the world, our allies and partners have looked for strong leadership from the united states, irrespective of the party affiliation of the president, i think they've been pretty much unnerved over the last three and a half muscyears because donald trump looks at what is best for donald trump. his mantra, america first, is trying to play to his base here and it's being heard around the world that the united states is going to do things to the

exclusion of the interest of others as well as to global stability. that's why i think he is a very dangerous person to be at the helm of our government and that's why i think there is a lot of concern about what the future holds, if in fact, donald trump is re-elected. >> i want to get into some of the headlines from the last -- the news cycle is so rapid but i believe that the declassification of some of your notes has been in the news from one of the men who is viewed to be politicizing positions that were once only held by the truly experienced and qualified, our current dni, mr. ratcliffe. can you talk about that incident and do some setting of the record straight. >> just the way donald trump has abused the sporesponsibilities authorities of the office of the presidency, john ratcliffe has followed in his footsteps and has totally abused those responsibilities and authorities of the office of the director of national intelligence. he has very selectively declassified and released

information to try to promote the interests of donald trump, and so the most recent releases that had my handwritten notes really misrepresented, in fact, what i was doing at the time which was trying to make sure that president obama and the national security team had full awareness of what our ability was to access russian information. so, those handwritten notes referred to allegations that the russians were making that hillary clinton was trying to point to donald trump's relationship with russia as a way to divert attention from her issues and problems. that is what the russians were saying to themselves and i was again using that as evidence of our access to this information, but if -- and it's a big if -- those allegations were true, there's nothing illegal or unlawful about that but john ratcliffe is presenting it in a manner that has left the impression that it is something that was illegal and unlawful and that hillary clinton had

instigated this hoax about russian interference. it is incontrovertible that the russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of donald trump and it is my view that their assistance really helped get donald trump over the finish line in terms of the electoral college victory. therefore, what john ratcliffe is doing is really a great disservice not just to the women and men of the intelligence community who work around the globe 24 hours a day 7 days a week to keep this country safe, it's a disservice to the american people and he should be ashamed and it's a disgrace. i can't understand how he is allowed to continue in that position. >> i want to push you on what the impact must be of the men and women who actually risk their lives to gather this intelligence, but we have to sneak in a quick break. director brennan, rick, i'd ask you both to stick around. on the other side of the break i want to share this news, fbi director chris wray possibly

putting his job on the line by speaking out on election security. we'll bring you that as well. stay with us. security we'll bring you that as well stay with us t if you get home ar "ooh" is more of a "hmm..." you have 100 days to change your mind. that's the visionworks difference. visionworks. see the difference. i remember herwho was because she had a bracelet that had the names of her children. she asked me, 'doctor, am i going to be okay?' and i could not give her the answer that i wanted to give her. there is no excuse for why we don't have this under control at this point. joe biden listens to medical experts. he actually has a plan that does the things that we should have been doing many months ago. and joe biden is not going to let his ego get in the way of fighting the disease. ff pac is responsible for the content of this ad. ♪

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i got this mountain bike for only $11. dealdash.com, the fair and honest bidding site. an ipad worth $505, was sold for less than $24; a playstation 4 for less than $16; and a schultz 4k television for less than $2. i won these bluetooth headphones for $20. i got these three suitcases for less than $40. and shipping is always free. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. rest assured that the security of the election and safeguarding your vote is and will continue to be one of our highest priorities. >> we're working hard every day contributing to the whole of government effort to safeguard elections. >> i'm here today to tell you that my confidence in the security of your vote has never

been higher. >> to be clear, it would be very difficult for adversaries to interfere with or manipulate voting results at scale. that's an fbi video that makes clear top u.s. national security officials are desperate and intent on guaranteeing the integrity and security and confidence that people feel in this election which is now less than four weeks away. as the associated press puts it, quote, though trump was not mentioned during the nine-minute video, the message served as a tacet counter to his repeated efforts to allege widespread fraud in the mail ballot process and cast out on the legitimacy of the election. we're back with john brennan and rick stengel. john, i want to get your thoughts on this parallel american government because it seems that those messages not only contradict the current president but they obliterate both the substance and the

accuracy and they really call into question the motive of all of his messages that run unt cooco -- counter to it to delegitimize the message. >> good on chris wray and those officials to try to reassure the american public and send a clear signal to foreign adversaries who might have intention to try to interfere in this election. i know that the rank and file within the intelligence community and law enforcement are demoralized because you have somebody in the oval office who is dismissive of intelligence, tries to manipulate law enforcement and judicial systems for his own benefit, but i am confident that they're going to continue doing what they need to do to keep this country safe. so i think chris wray and chris krebs, as well as others, they're the ones who really are going to ensure that we are doing our very best to ensure that this election is going to

be one that will fairly reveal and represent the will and the interest of the american people. >> rick stengel, you've written extensively about russian disinformation and when you look at the fact that current acting executive branch officials who report through the chain of command to donald trump have to counter not just russian disinformation but presidential disinformation. what goes through your head? >> i thought that video was very powerful. it's a testimony and a testament to the fact that these men, these leaders in the intelligence community, want to do the thing that's most important for us, to protect the integrity of our election. i would just add, to go back to what john was saying -- and john, congratulations on the book. john and mike have something in common. they're patriots. what patriots do is they run towards a problem. they run towards danger. they don't run away from it and that's what both of these men have been doing. i think the video today from

director wray is an example of that as well. it's counter disinformation. donald trump is a super spreader of disinformation, the biggest one in our whole country. you have the director of the fbi, you have other cyber security officials trying to put out the truth and basically saying this election is more protected than certainly the election in 2016, maybe than more elections in the past. it is a warning, as john said, to foreign adversaries who want to interfere in this election. by the way, we have a huge advantage this time. we know what happened in 2016, and we have for the most part gotten ready. the other thing as we've talked about op this show, it's very hard to hack the election districts because they're not on the internet. there are 20,000 of them in the country and they're not even online. it's very hard for russians or anybody else to hack the election. >> rick, i want to read a little bit more of director brennan's book.

i'm going to read this to you. trump showed no intellectual curiosity about what russia had done and how it had carried out its campaign to interfere in the election which suggested to me that he wasn't interested in learning the truth or in taking action to prevent a recurrence. more ominously, i left with a dark feeling that our country was entering what would be a very painful and dangerous chapter of its history. sadly, rick stengel, from this moment, i think this was during the transition when he was briefed on the russian attack on the elections, right? >> yes. >> jim comey had a similar sinking feeling about it. my question is, rick, all that has been realized. right now today we have a president who is still mum on vladimir putin putting bounties on the heads of american soldiers if the taliban fighters could murder them and kill them. we have a president who's done nothing and we have a president who continues to say i don't believe or i didn't see things

in my pdd when it comes to russia. what are the stakes in terms of the u.s.-russia relationship in november, rick? >> well, the stakes couldn't be higher. reading john's paragraph, there's a wealth of material between the lines there that he didn't talk about and that i don't even necessarily know about either. as we've been saying for a long time, trump doesn't behave in any way different than if he were, in fact, a crowny or a quizling of vladimir putin. if you do that mental experiment, that's exactly how he behaves. but i would say at this point in time with the election a month away, let's solve the problem in the ballot box. whatever his relationship is with russia and vladimir putin, let's solve the problem on november 3rd by kicking him out so we don't have even the shadow of a doubt that we have an american president who is in an alliance with a foreign adversary. >> director brennan, i think one

of the signature moments of this presidency was your testimony before congress when you used the term witting or unwitting agent. i'm going to botch the direct quote, but what did you know in that moment that you couldn't tell us that's now come true, that we see with our own eyes? >> i think the mueller report revealed the extensiveness of the contacts between individuals affiliated with the trump campaign and russia. we see the indictments that have taken place of individuals. there was a corruption that ran deep within the trump campaign. i think that corruption now has transcended from the campaign into the administration and we see that corruption malfeasance and incompetence. so, again, i was very concerned as we were turning over the baton of authority and power to the trump administration that trump was going to pursue the responsibilities of the office of the presidency the same way he carried out his own personal business and financial activities which was to lie and

cheat and to do whatever he could in order to advance his own personal interests. i think as rick said, this election coming up is the most important certainly in our lifetimes, and i would just encourage people to vote because i believe that we need to send a resounding signal not just to the american people that trump's activities and his administration's behavior are being denounced, we need to send a signal to our allies and partners and adversaries around the world that the trump administration as an aberration and we're going to be bigger and better than ever before. >> director brennan, congratulations on the book. thank you for spending some time with us here. rick stengel, thank you for being here for this conversation. john's book is "undowntownaunt" fight against enemies at home and abroad. we're just moments away from tonight's debate. we're joined from salt lake city

to tell us how senator harris is preparing for tonight. senator s preparing for tonight. keeping your oysters business growing

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hospital, has had rhetoric that is incredibly dangerous, not just to himself but to the american public, to his ow and the thing about that, too, nicole, is that he did this kind of the stunt where he took off his mask s and used it as a campaign ad and that he posted something that was so wrong thas twitter had to put -- had to put a statement on his tweet. so, this is where we are with this president. p and here is the thing. it goes back to what joe biden said last week, which is, it's not about donald trump or joe biden or even kamala harris or vice president mike pence. it is about the millions of people today who are suffering, who are suffering because of thisay pandemic that we're in t middle of and also this economic crisis that donald trump and mike pence has mismanaged. so, that's what we're going to see tonight from kamala harris. she'sfr going to put forth a vision for this country, what

this administration could look like under an biden/harris administration, and those -- that's the contrast that she will make. she will talk directly to the american people, and she's looking forward to it. >> what did you do to prepare differently after watching the debate last week? obviously, i went back and watched some of mike pence's debates. he doesn't do any of those really off the wall things that trump does, but trump is apparently, well, we know he's under the influence of anhe experimental drug cocktail. i mean, did you do any gaming out of unexpected scenarios? again, i think it's unlikely, myself, from someone like mike pence,se but did last week's so of debacle on the trump side force you guys to rethink any strategies for tonight? >> so, let me just say this. i mean, mike pence is a good debater. he really is. he's had successful debates and he is a talking, you know, a kind of a talking point machine, but the problem is that every -- just because you deliver a good

line, doesn't mean you're telling thet truth. and so, there's going to be a lot of distortions. there's going to be a lot of lies. and it's goings to be up to th media and the moderator, and clearly our campaign will do the same, to do that fact checking, because we can't allow these deflections to go to the wayside. and so, kamala harris, as i, you know, as we all know, is a preparer. we've seen her in hearings and past debates, and she has been a great student of the information, and she has a really diverse, incredible debate team that has done this -- has worked at this level on presidential side for many, many years, and so, she is ready to go. but that's the thing. i mean, yes, donald trump is very different than mike pence, and like i said, mike pence is a different type of debater, but we're ready to go. i mean, he delivers his distorted lines with a smile and with confidence, but we can't let that sit. >> karine, i wonder what you

guys are doing about the news out of the justice department today that they will not honor the long-held tradition of not enacting any policies that would interfere with an election. >> you know, the justice department under donald trump, led byer bill barr, has been politicized, anden it's the abu of power that we have seen from bill barr is just beyond troubling. and this is where we are. i mean, bill barr essentially is using the d.o.j. as a political arm for donald trump's campaign. it is more -- he's more the lawyer for the president than for the american people. and so, what we will do, what joe biden will do under his administration, he will restore the reputation of the department of justice, and that's what we need. and atalso, it just reminds you how much we need new leadership, and this is what this campaign is all about. this is what this election is all s about. i heard one of your guests right

before i came on talk about how consequential this election is. and if we want to get out of this t nightmare, if we want to really get out of this moment that we're in, people have to vote. we have to vote. and that's what this debatee is going to be all about. it's going to be about kamala harris tonight talking directly to the american people, giving that contrast, and next week, if -- willing, if it happens next week, joe biden will do the same, and he is ready to debate. and so, that's what we're going to do, continue to talk to -- directly to the american people. >> karine jean-pierre, we will bein watching tonight along wit you and before the debate, tune in for our special coverage. i willci get to join my friends and colleagues, rachel maddow and joy reed. one of our guests will be forme mayor pete buttigieg, who's been partti of the harris debate pre. don't miss us, don't miss it 8:00 eastern right here on msnbc. the next hour of deadline white house starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. starts after k break. n'dot go anywhere. one day

we'll look back and remember the moment that things, for one strange time in our lives, got very quiet. some lost work and invented new ways to get by. others were busier than ever, and found strength they never knew they had. we sheltered with the people who matter most, sometimes finding how far apart we'd drifted. we worried over loved ones, over money, over our planet. and over take-out. and we found a voice one the noise out there had kept quiet. when the world starts spinning again, let's remember this time where none of us felt secure, and fight for a future where everyone can. because when the world seems like it's standing still... that's the perfect time for us to change it.

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no one's letting it. nick didn't let it. it wasn't a choice. and it dominated his life. it dominated my life. it dominated our family's lives for 95 days and because he didn't make it, it will forever affect my life. why are you bragging? have empathy to the americans that you are our leader. have some empathy to the people who are suffering and grieving. it's just not fair. >> it is not. hi again, everyone. it's 5:00 in the east. it's been nearly one week since

donald trump became one of the more than 7 million americans who have contracted the coronavirus. one thing he hasn't done is show any sympathy or empathy their families, including his own wife or the families of nick cordero and the more than 210,000 other americans who have died from this virus on his watch. instead, he has insulted them by pushing a message of strength over safety, saying things like, don't let it dominate you and don't be afraid of it. he showed that this afternoon again by leaving isolation and quarantine and making a trip to the oval office which was signified by a marine standing guard outside the door to the west wing. the role of empathizer in chief has fallen to joe biden who made a closing argument for his candidacy yesterday around the themes of unity in gettysburg, pennsylvania, around a civil war battlefield that symbolizes a country once divided against itself. >> this pandemic is not a red state or blue state issue.

this virus doesn't care whether you live or where you live, what political party you belong to. it infects us all. it will take anyone's life. we paid a high price for allowing the deep divisions in this country to impact on how we deal with the coronavirus. let's just set partisanship aside. let's end the politics and follow the science. we can't undo what has been done. we can't go back, but we can do so much better. >> and if the latest polls are any indication, americans are increasingly drawn to that message from joe biden. two national polls out this week give joe biden a 14-16 point advantage over donald trump and donald trump's favorite poll, most times, ras rasmussen, has him down 12 points. the trouble for republicans may not be contained at the top of the ticket. as "the washington post" reports, a gop group working to elect senate republicans

conducted polling over the weekend in four states, colorado, georgia, montana, and north carolina as trump was hospitalized. the president's numbers dropped significantly in every state, falling by about five points in all four. the president is in real trouble, said one of the group's operative. donald trump's dire political standing is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. white house reporter, the aforementioned ashley parker is here. also joining us, former rnc chairman michael steele, and former white house press secretary, robert gibbs is here. ashley parker, take me through your reporting and anything you know about this jaunt from the covid-infected president from the residence to the oval office. >> sure. so, the president has been lobbying to get back to the oval office, basically since he returned to the residence monday evening. he wanted to do it yesterday. aides, i was told, kind of ran the traps and told him that he

could not do it safely. today, you know, i was told he was cleared by his medical team to do it, whatever exactly that means, but again, the behind the scenes, there were a number of advisors who tried to express to him that this was, in fact, a bad idea, but i was told the president was simply insistent. so they are saying, again, that, you know, anyone coming into contact with him will be wearing all sorts of ppe, which is available, these yellow gowns, masks, gaggles, gloves, but when you look at why his polls are falling, and what you're hearing from some of these voters he needs to hold, senior citizens, women voters, one thing they don't like is that this feels like -- is another example that feels like the president behaving in a reckless and selfish way. there is no reason that he can not be briefed or cannot work from the residence. and it feels like an unnecessary risk, which regardless of what precautions you take, already at least nine people literally in the west wing in the white house have been infected, far more in his broader orbit and broader

circle. and the president, again, is showing basically no regard for them whatsoever, and that is something that has been conveyed to voters, not just how he treats his own team but as you said, how he talks about this virus. he has never expressed empathy or sympathy with the million of other americans, some of his aides had hoped that he might emerge from this hospital stay and adopt a newfound, more serious tone, more iempathetic tone, less self-centered, all about trump town, but that's not what we have seen. >> you know, michael steele, it's easy to blame the steroids for the rage, but let me put the polls up. i think this would do it as well. in nevada, joe biden is up six points. in ohio, biden is up one point. in florida, joe biden has opened up an 11-point lead. pennsylvania, joe biden's up 13 points. biden's up in iowa, five points. wisconsin poll has biden up five points there.

i was told by a trump advisor that they were one event away from the bottom falling out. i would not have expected the hospitalization of the president from coronavirus to be that one event, but what do you think? what do these polls say to you? >> well, i think it's a combination of events. and ashley, in her reporting, has kind of laid down sort of the baseline of -- with the numbers that you see, and what you and i are hearing from those folks in trump orbit who are sitting there scratching their head going, what the hell is this guy doing? i mean, this is not rocket science. stay upstairs. you're sick. build up that sympathy and that empathy with the american people. send out a tweet saying, i now understand what so many families have gone through. my own family, we're going through this together. i mean, this is not hard. but here's the rub. he doesn't have that gene. he's not built that way. his upbringing, his experience,

whatever it was, has, you know, formed a man without that inner soul, without that sense of, gee, you actually are in pain right now. and so when he hears these pleas -- and we saw it when he did the town hall just recently where the woman's kind of saying, hey, this is what i'm going through, and he just kind of looked at her with this blank stare. it's like, we're working hard to address that. okay, well, that's what the government says, you know? but that's not what a president says. so, i think for a lot of reasons, this void continues to grow. and just if i could -- >> please. >> the moment for this campaign was defined not by the president but at gettysburg, ironically enough, by joe biden. he says, we've allowed, you know, deep divisions within our country to divide how we deal with this virus.

and every american, i don't care how you stand or how you walk, whether you love trump or you're indifferent or don't care, recognized that truth. we've allowed these deep divisions to decide who lives and dies. and it has never been that way for us. and so, biden has put his finger, i think, on an important pulse for the rest of this campaign, and i don't know how trump outnarrates that. >> you know, it's such a good point. robert gibbs, i was on the air when he gave that speech, and we started there yesterday, and again, four years ago today, the "access hollywood" tape came out. john podesta's emails started leaking. we do not know how this is going to end. we do not know what we'll be leading with tomorrow, if we're being perfectly honest here today, but something has seeped into the collective consciousness, and it's that donald trump does not care about you. donald trump does not care about anybody that lives with him or works with him, and then every

day, he seems intent on giving us example after example after example to cement his own worst narratives. jason johnson said on this show yesterday, he's a walking negative advertisement against himself. it seems that he has become that, really, in a pretty concerted way around his failures on coronavirus as though he's trying. >> well, i think, you know, different presidents settle into a different strategy to get re-elected. in 1984, ronald reagan, in 1996, bill clinton sought to have a referendum on themselves and a referendum on the direction of where the country was going. in 2004, with george bush, in 2012 with barack obama, it's a choice between one vision or the other. and in reality, what donald trump needed to get this election to once covid hit was into a choice. >> right. >> and yet, it's never been more than a referendum. and it's stuck on that.

and as you said, each and every day, we're reminded of the failures of this administration. we're reminded of the character flaws. we're reminded of the empathy flaws that exist within donald trump. and this, quite frankly, is why mike pence's job is going to be so difficult tonight because it's not just about the comparison between trump and biden or pence and kamala harris. in reality, what mike pence has to do tonight is to get the american people to think fundamentally about a presidency that they're watching the reality show of each and every day, horrified by what the next episode will show. and again, donald trump doesn't have the attention span or the strategy to get this into anything else other than that, and i think every day, nothing has been more crystallizing, really, than the last week. once he walked off that stage in the debate and we had seen that for 90 minutes, all the way into, not just diagnosed with coronavirus but the actions of

going on that ride out to to th white house and now into the oval office, demanding that people put on ppe to come have a meeting that you could do on a conference call or a zoom. >> like the rest of us. i want to follow up with you, robert gibbs. it's a little bit sort of political wonkiness, but our viewers could all teach political science after these last four years, so let me just go a little bit deeper on this. structurally, this is exactly right. an incumbent president with an approval rating as low as donald trump's, and his approval rating, it has always hovered around 40%, cannot win if the conversation and the news in these final weeks is about that president. one of the things that someone involved in debate prep said to me is that he is constitutionally incapable of shutting up long enough to let the conversation be anything that his opponent says because he doesn't let him talk. it would seem that with that locked in now, with this race clearly in the minds of the

american voters, a referendum on donald trump's presidency, on his failures to contain and protect people from covid, there is very little that pence can do tonight to alter that. >> i think it's tremendously difficult, the task that he has, because he's not simply the vice president. he's not simply the explainer of the president's actions. hey, good luck with that, mr. vice president. but he's also the head of the coronavirus task force. right? he's going to have to answer a series of questions. why is the building with the most resources on planet earth not doing contact tracing? why are masks still not mandatory on the campus? i mean, it's -- it isn't rocket science, right? it's really quite basic, and i think there's no doubt pence has a tough job. and look, in some ways, even on joe biden's not his most perfect days, his best strategy has still been, let donald trump be donald trump. and you know, you heard this so much. we're going to have to let donald trump be donald trump. letting donald trump be donald

trump is why his approval rating is in the low 40s. it's why his approval rating and his vote number are almost identical. and you see it in poll after poll, that inability to get beyond that 40%, 41%, 42%, and look, i don't think i'm ever going to live long enough to see a democrat win florida by 11 points so i'm not believing all of these polls, but look, there's clearly something that's going on out there that sees so -- an election that has otherwise been so remarkably stable all of a sudden change in the last week. >> you know, ashley parker, i want to press you on some of what you're reporting. it also tracks with something tim alberta has been tweeting about and writing about about women voters and this explains some of that really tough-looking polling for incumbent republican senators. tim tweeted this. i can't overstate the significance of this. two red state republicans on consecutive days telling me they're seeing polls they never

thought were possible. their shared conclusion, trump's standing with white college-educated women threatens to tank the entire party down ballot on november 3rd. >> well, that's certainly what we heard from that republican group when they were out in the field in those four states, and i was talking to a republican official today who basically said, look, the president's numbers first debate, it has just been bad news after bad news for him. there was his behavior in the debate where he came across as angry and as a bully, which in general turns off these women he needs to hold, these suburban women. then there was not just his handling of the coronavirus writ large, which has long been a problem, but his handling of his own case of coronavirus, where he, again, was unable to express any empathy and the person said to me, the president is going to

have to do more than come out and say, hey, i beat the virus, vote for me to win over voters. that's not a particularly compelling argument. and then, their word again, too soon to see in the polling, but the president's fairly erratic and contradictory tweets yesterday that blew up the stimulus negotiations, tanked the market in that moment and again, i want to be clear. the negotiations were not headed on a particularly upward or positive trajectory, but what the president did and republicans will say this and his own team will privately tell you, they believe it was an act of self-sabotage. if and when the deal falls apart, he just took all that blame and owned it. so, yeah, that's not going to endear him to a ton of voters. >> michael steele, i wonder who's going to make the first, don't blame the steroids t-shirt. let me give you two little -- >> i'm printing them now. >> you and me. let me give you two little points, you tell me what constellation is appearing for you. this is from tim alberta, who's got, i think, a finger on the

pulse of this gop under trump. tim says this. what we're seeing now in polling conducted by both parties isn't a wave. it isn't even a tsunami. it's something we don't have a name for. the president standing with women voters of every race, every educational background, every socioeconomic stratum has fallen off. when it comes to the white college educated women who made up a sizable chunk of trump's base when he won 44% of them against hillary, his numbers have collapsed entirely. take that collapse and this is also in the news today. a 632% increase in absentee ballots. i mean, it seems like if you lose -- if the bottom falls out from your coalition four years ago and turnout explodes, it just -- again, just back to robert gibbs' point. it becomes structurally extremely challenging to do anything in the final 28 days other than the extra judicial, which we'll get to later in the hour. >> well, as a county chairman and the state chairman and as

national chairpersman, i never wanted to be in the way of any of that. it's just not tenable from an electoral standpoint, to think you're somehow going to, with 26 days left in the campaign, down by double digits, 12, 13, 14 points, that you're going to turn that around. and that's the stark reality for the campaign right now. and so, how do you overcome that truth? what do you do? so, here's a fact. four years ago, to this day, at this point in the trump/clinton campaign, 75,000 ballots, vote by mail ballots, had been cast. in other words, voters had gotten them, sent them back in. you know how many that is today, four years later? 4 million. >> wow. >> 4 million. so, we're talking about an exponential game here. where you've got, already, i

mean, we haven't even gotten to early voting yet here in maryland. that doesn't happen until october 26th where people can actually do early voting. the -- absentee ballot requests are ahead in states before you even get to the early voting programs. so voters are amped up to engage here. all of the hot rhetoric about, you know, oh, gee, vote by mail is rigged, it's not good, people weren't buying it. they saw through it. and inasmuch as i know folks inside the trump camp and orbit tried to turn that narrative around, you even had state party officials going, i can't go out and sell this because that's how we win elections in this state, through absentee ballots. you're telling my base vote to stay home or come out into the cold and not take a ballot? so, it's a real problem for the president at this point, both narratively speaking, politically speaking, and electorally speaking. >> michael steele, ashley parker, robert gibbs, three of the best of the best.

thank you so much for starting us off. when we return, senator kamala harris ready to take on mike pence in tonight's vice presidential debate. we'll preview the night with one of senator harris's closest friends in the senate, new jersey's cory booker will be our next guest. plus, it's the trump policy that outraged the nation and shocked the world. separating children from their parents at the border as policy. there's new reporting out today about the origins of that policy and just how high up the officials were who were pushing it. and amid new warns that the coronavirus death toll could hit 400,000 in this country, ongoing concerns about donald trump's behavior since his release from walter reed. deadline white house continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. ontinues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. ok everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. whoo-hoo! great tasting ensure with 9 grams of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, and nutrients to support immune health.

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has the president or anyone at the white house ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone, yes or no, please, sir. >> the president or anybody else. >> seems you would remember something like that and be able to tell us. >> yeah, but i'm trying to grapple with the word, suggest. there have been discussions of matters out there that they have not asked me to open an investigation, but -- >> perhaps they've suggested? >> i don't know. i wouldn't say suggest. >> hinted? >> i don't know. >> inferred? you don't know? okay. >> it's like she knew where bill barr was heading in that moment. we've all witnessed her prosecutorial expertise on capitol hill. tonight, we'll see senator kamala harris face off against mike pence in the vice presidential debate, a night

politico previews this way. quote, after last week's scream fest between donald trump and joe biden drowned out nearly all talk of policy, it's now on vice president mike pence and senator kamala harris to illuminate wednesday night how the two tickets differ on substance. pence has considerable ground to make up after trump's widely-panned bulldozer act last week and harris has the delicate task of taking on the president as he recovers from the coronavirus. joining us now, former democratic presidential candidate senator cory booker of new jersey, who is also well known these days as senator harris's closest friend in the senate. just tell me, one, what you're looking for tonight, and two, i'd love to hear your thoughts about where you think the race is today. >> personally, i just want to say, it made me kind of sad when you show her and i sitting together. we did that for many, many hearings and i'm going to miss her because i believe that this is the best ticket for america, really to hope that she goes on to be the next vice president. and look, for tonight, it's hard

for me to be honest with you, to escape the historical moment that we have right now. i sent kamala a picture of a friend of mine's daughter, african-american, rapt, watching her on tv and america's never had a moment like this before where a black woman will be on a major debate stage in a vice presidential contest. it's just going to be extraordinary. but the one thing i love about kamala, and this was her campaign slogan as we both slogged it out through the primary was, kamala harris for the people. and i think that tonight she's not going to be about her in this historic moment. she's going to be about the folks out there in america who are really hurting in this crisis, in covid pandemic, with a president that is menacing and threatening their healthcare by ramming through a supreme court justice, who has failed to have a plan not only to deal with the pandemic but to deal with the economic challenge. he just pulled the rug out from

tens of millions of americans and all the experts, including the head of the fed, who have been desperately hoping that we would get a bill done to help our economy. we saw the -- we saw even the stock market take a dip as a result of the irresponsibility of this president. so she has a lot of material to show not just that this is the wrong president and vice president to lead, but the vision that joe biden and her have for america. >> you know, she'll be making that history, but she's also taking the stage at an historic moment, and i want to play some of joe biden's speech. i think yesterday, sought to put words to some of what you're articulating. i mean, this president has constantly struck match after match and thrown it into the tinderbox that is now in the eyes of many a very counterproductive conversation about race. let me show you what joe biden said yesterday. >> doc rivers, the basketball coach, choking back tears when

he said, we're the ones getting killed. we're the ones getting shot. we have been hung. it's amazing why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back. i think about that. i think about what it takes for a black person to love america. that is a deep love for this country that has for far too long never been recognized. what we need in america is leadership that seeks to de-escalate tensions, to open lines of communications, to bring us together, to heal, to hope. >> it was a remarkable speech. i said that yesterday, but it's also a remarkable closing message, and the polls show that this is where the majority, a plurality of men and women of all ages stand. they stand with doc rivers. they stand with what joe biden said, and i wonder how you feel about that.

>> well, i had a powerful, intimate conversation with the vice president when i was doing what all of his vanquished did in the primary. i was going to endorse him. we drove from flinlt, michigan, to detroit, michigan, what is a testimony to so much of the potential and promise of tomorrow but the unfinished business we have for that city with a large black population. and i was kind of impressed and moved to hear him talk so eloquently about race and understanding, with a humility, the role that he has to play in this unfinished business of a country that is struggling to achieve itself as a multiracial democracy. and so, i just tell you, what i love about joe, and forgive me for calling the vice president that, but i keep the love about him from being a contestant against him, because in a number of occasions during the primary on issues of race, i'll never

forget he called me right after i got off on national tv, criticizing him, he calls me up and with an open heart tried to understand where i was coming from and made a concession that he was a man in progress, that he had what brenee brown would call true courage to show vulnerability that he is still a person in development and for a nation that needs to heal, a nation that needs to grow, a nation that needs to expand consciousness, to have a leader like him bringing us along with him, challenging us to keep going, it is the right leader at the right time for a nation that is struggling right now. >> and you threw in a brenee brown quote in there to boot. that is analysis that we cannot find anywhere else except from you, senator corey booker. thank you so much for spending some time with us. a reminder, our special coverage on tonight's vice presidential debate begins at 8:00 eastern. when we come back, there is stunning new reporting out today

about the origins of donald trump's policy of separating even very, very, very young children from their parents at the border. we'll have that when "deadline white house" continues after a short break. deadline white house" continues after a short break. knowing who we are is hard. it's hard. eliminate who you are not first, and you're going to find yourself where you need to be. ♪ the race is never over. the journey has no port. the adventure never ends, because we are always on the way. ♪ ♪ "a good education takes you many different horizons" and that sticked to my mind. so, when $1 a day came out, i said, "why not"? why not just utilize that resource. and walmart made that path open for me. without the $1 a day program, i definitely don't think i'd be in school right now.

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no unemployment benefits. vote no on the deceptive uber, lyft, doordash prop 22. one ride california doesn't want to take. doordash prop 22. so false, a judge ordered them bistruck from the voter guide. prop 15 are using scare tactics but the following facts are not in dispute. prop 15 closes big corporate tax loopholes, protects homeowners, and cuts small business taxes. but that's not all, by closing the loopholes, communities can invest in local schools, ppe for nurses, and our firefighters. don't be deceived by big corporate scare tactics. vote yes on 15. this administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border. dhs is not separating families legitimately seeking asylum at ports of entry.

dhs does have a responsibility to protect minors and in that case as well, we will only separate the family if we cannot determine there is a familial relationship, if the child may be at risk with the parent or legal guardian, or if the parent or legal guardian is referred for prosecution. >> famous last words. that was then secretary of homeland security kirstjen nielsen just weeks after five u.s. attorneys along the mexico border had recoiled against an order from the justice department to prosecute all undocumented immigrants, even if it meant separating families. according to a bombshell report in "the new york times," which reveals damning new details of a two-year inquiry by the d.o.j. watchdog, the inspector general, michael horowitz into the trump administration's 2018 zero tolerance policy. those prosecutors told top d.o.j. officials that they were deeply concerned about the children's welfare but then attorney general jeff sessions told the prosecutors on a conference call, quote, we need

to take away the children, according to notes from the participants. a week later, during a second call, this is stuff we never knew before, then-deputy attorney general mr. rod rosenstein went even further than sessions, telling prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants. nbc news has reviewed a draft of the d.o.j. inspector general's report and is also confirming the details as reported by the "times." a justice department spokesperson refuted the report in a statement saying, in part, "both the timing and misleading content of this leak raise troubling questions about the motivations of those responsible for it." joining our conversation, nbc news correspondent julia ainsley, also with us, "new york times" washington correspondent and msnbc national security contributor, mike schmidt. both michael and julia have done reporting on this story. mike schmidt, it's just a split screen today from the justice

department. they blame the inspector general report that's made its way into public view on politics on the same day that they blow up some of their own guidelines for conduct for their own department ahead of an election. talk about the ig report first. >> well, look, the ig has taken this look from inside the justice department. what was going inside the justice department when child separation was happening. how did this policy come about? and how is it being implemented? the public knew that jeff sessions was a champion of this policy, even though jeff sessions had said publicly that, you know, they didn't think they would be separating children from their parents. this clearly shows that sessions knew what he was doing. what's new and different about this is that it shows rosenstein's involvement in implementing the policy in talking to the prosecutors on the border. and up until this point, rosenstein had largely been shielded. there had been a very good story

in the guardian a few months ago that first sort of got into his role here, but this shows him on the phone, based on notes that were taken by folks on the other end of the line, these prosecutors, describing how rosenstein was instructing them on the issue of age related to the separations. >> julia, we have had lots of conversations here on this show, including listening to that tape from propublica of children wailing. this human catastrophe of this has been documented thanks to journalists like both of you but what do you make of the fact that rosenstein, who managed to sort of slink through the trump presidency on multiple sides of a lot of these most toxic policies, is now smack dab in the middle of arguably the most heinous one? >> it is fascinating, nicole, and not only was he involved in the decision to prosecute all parents no matter how young their children were, and give that direction, as mike points out. he also was on the justice

department end of an effort to pressure kirstjen nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, to move forward and sign the proclamation in may of that year to start referring all parents for prosecution. we know that leading into a white house meeting, rosenstein and sessions and a counselor at the justice department, jane hamilton, worked on meeting minutes that said, these children will be separated and that they will have to then be sent to hhs. all of that was known by the justice department, and they pushed kirstjen nielsen in a white house meeting where all the people present raised their hands, except for nielsen, as we've reported on nbc news, and they showed her that so that she would then go and sign the proclamation. she's not free from that. she, of course, did sign that and we know the repercussions but it shows how much was at play at the justice department to force dhs into this position because they wanted to prosecute everyone. and it shows that they really

can't wiggle around that and say that they didn't flknow there would be family separation. it was in the minutes and the agenda going into those meetings, nicole. so, all of this is just laying bare how every level of this administration was involved in the 2018 policy and it just completely negates any reasoning and any argument they ever had to say that this was not a policy of family separation. because it absolutely was. >> and mike schmidt, the "times" story goes through some of the other really disturbing details that prosecutors warned or there was knowledge that some of the families that were separating included infants young enough to still be breast-feeding. i mean, just talk about some of the new details we learned about what people on the ground were worried about and the kinds of flags they were sending back to d.o.j. >> the strength of inspector general investigations is that they're able to get inside these departments and, quote,

documents and emails and communicati communications that were going on, minutes from meetings, and show just how systematic this was. who knew what when. how the information was moving. and in this case, as you're poit pointing out, there's a message from an investigator to another, basically saying -- describing that they're finding out how children are being separated from their mothers who were being are breast-fed and the shocking nature of that and saying, i can't believe we're doing this. and it just -- it just allows you a view into this from the inside of the investigation, to see how this policy was slowly just engulfing the department and creating this massive humanitarian problem at the border. >> you know, julia, it is without any sort of sense of irony that the department pushed back today and sort of blamed politics, as i said earlier, for

this making its way into the public view but this is the same day this headline appeared. d.o.j. allows prosecutors to take steps that would interfere with elections. that is violating their own sort of pre-election period of not doing that. talk about this barr d.o.j. today. >> well, that's absolutely true. i mean, the justice department is trying to say that maybe they can push further and say things that they couldn't, open investigations they wouldn't, make public statements they ordinarily wouldn't do so close to an election which is shocking considering everything that happened with jim comey and hillary clinton emails leading up to the 2016 election and then of course this today. and as we understand it, nicole, this inspector general investigation, yes, it took two years of deep diving, but it also has been on hold for a long time because the justice department has been picking every detail apart, trying to push back and basically trying to hold it because they know that it could be damaging to

this administration before the election. so, it seems that they're trying to have it both ways here. and the other thing i'll point out is that they don't mention anywhere in their statement anything about a moral culpability and i think that we would understand that looking through these conversations, that the moral culpability simply was something left out of conversations and from statements. >> and as both of you have reported, going all the way to the top, and engulfing jeff sessions and rod rosenstein. julia ainsley, mike schmidt, thank you for your reporting on this story. when we come back, new questions about donald trump's erratic behavior while undergoing treatment for coronavirus. we'll ask our friend, dr. patel, to try to make some sense of it. "deadline white house" returns after a short break. don't go anywhere. use" returns after a short break. don't go anywhere.

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a woman who was young had covid-19. i remember her because she had a bracelet that had the names of her children. she asked me, 'doctor, am i going to be okay?' and i could not give her the answer that i wanted to give her. there is no excuse for why we don't have this under control at this point. joe biden listens to medical experts. he actually has a plan that does the things

that we should have been doing many months ago. and joe biden is not going to let his ego get in the way of fighting the disease. ff pac is responsible for the content of this ad. dr. anthony fauci says that without proper precautions, heading into fall and winter, the united states, quote, could have 300,000 to 400,000 covid-19 deaths. that is, of course, a horrifying prospect, but not necessarily a surprising one, given the lack of adequate leadership on the part of donald trump and his white house. in fact, not only is the administration failing to lead, they're actively doing harm at this point. "usa today" counted 23 instances just since september 1st of this year when trump or his own staff defied their own cdc's coronavirus guidelines, and that was before trump returned to the oval office this afternoon. joining our conversation, former obama white house health policy director msnbc medical

contributor, our friend d dr. kavita patel. first i've got to get your take on where we stand with a president who is either in the drips of the experimental treatment, still contagious, rattling around the residence, and heading over to the oval office today. >> yeah, it's a great question, nicole, that we're all wondering about, and you can imagine that a number of my medical colleagues and i are furiously texting, trying to make sense out of what little public information we're getting from the president's physician who sent out pretty much nonstatement statement that said, you know, the president is feeling great. and we know that watching patients with covid-19 that not only are they highly infectious, but there's just -- we're hearing something publicly that does not -- that does not jive, honestly, with what we know in taking care of patients who receive the kind of treatments the president had, everything from that antibody cocktail to the antiviral to dexamethasone,

the steroid that's pretty -- it's a pretty consequential treatment. so, i have to -- and then on top of that, hearing that, you know, the white house is kind of secretly contacting gold star families who were at an event sunday, that they were in contact with someone who was positive and yet we still are being told that we don't want to look backwards when asked about the president's last known negative test or what the efforts for contact tracing have revealed, and i think all of this, nicole, would be kind of in and of itself insane, but what's even more insane is hearing that the president wants to participate in a debate, and yet then not having these answers seems reasonable enough for people like vice president joe biden, his entire staff, and all the people involved with the trump campaign to put themselves at risk. that's -- it's just mind-boggling. >> let me about the white house itself.

i mean, i have the privilege of working there. it really is a special and sacred place. it is now the site of a super spreader event, and people that have the privilege of going to events there, the ceremony to honor a nominee to the supreme court, as you "daily beast" is reporting this hour that veterans group that brought gold star families to the white house for an event monday gold s house for an event monda earlier than the white house acknowledged a single positive covid test for the 17 or 18 people in the president's or bit that have turned up sick with covid, what should be happening at the white house right now? >> i can't under score your comments about how truly sacred the grounds are in terms of the staff there and the privilege that goes along with being one of those staff members. that has all been violated. what should happen is not just standard contact tracing. this should go well beyond kbha wh

-- what is standard because it a sacred institution not just from the fact that it's a privilege to workat there, but e explore sure. the number of people in and out of thatop complex as well as a matter of w national security. now we got not only joint chiefs of staff, navy, we have dig tear -- dig tarries that visit the staff. so this is ais big deal.ig the three things that need to be done, deep cleaning. we've seen some photo evidence of that. numberen two is not only reduci the number of staff in contact with the president, that entire complex needs to be dramaticall reduced in terms of staffing and the third thing that needs to be done and i can tell you right now that it's not being done, the third thing thatbe needs toe done is extensive contact tracing along with continuous support to make sure that peopl who are contacted get tested. and i have proof -- i have no proof that any of that is really being done on a consistent

basis. >> we have proof of the opposite. a lot of people who are in and around those events saying they haven't been contacted. thank you for spending some time with us today. when we return as we do every day, remembering lives well lived. as we do every day, remembering lives well lived

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he left japan for paris by boat in 1964. according to the "new york times", the plan was just to be there for six months. kenzo stayed 56 years building his luxury fashion house from scratch. his vision was technique so much like his personality, colorful, corky, cross cultural inspired by travel. kenzo's talent was legendary but so was his kindness. he was so well liked among his peers that an official said that even people who hated each other agreed on one thing, that they loved kenzo takada. it adds another level and grief of his passing. kenzo died of complications from the coronavirus this sunday. it happened to be the middle of fashion week in paris. a visionary and genius and kind soul was 81. thank you for letting us into your homes during this

extraordinary times. "the beat" with ari melber begins after a short break. h arr begins after a short break up at 2:00am again? tonight, try pure zzzs all night. unlike other sleep aids, our extended release melatonin helps you sleep longer. and longer. zzzquil pure zzzs all night. fall asleep. stay asleep.

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>> welcome to "the beat" i'm ari melber. the president continues to break his administration's rules flatly breaking the conventional doctors orders to isolate while contagious. president trump doing what everyone with covid is told not to do, leaving home to go to work and endangering others. trump spent the afternoon at work in the oval office with two aides, a decision to violate the medical guidance is not a

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